Over the next couple weeks I will be rereading Children's Ministry in the Way of Jesus by Ivy Beckwith and David Csinos. I will be posting thoughts and general questions here. I hope you will join me in reading this excellent book. You can get it on amazon here or for your Kindle here. Please post your thoughts and comments below!

Here is a free teaser/glimpse into the content of the book - it is an article on Children's Ministry by the authors. 

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." ~ 1 Corinthians 12:26-27

The Christian Church in the United States is arguable one of the most divided churches in the world. We have more denominations per capita and Sunday morning worship continues to be the most segregated hour in American life. We are blessed when we can overcome our divisions and segregation to worship together as one body of Christ. During August we are blessed to worship with First Church of Christ and Second Baptist at the historic First Baptist Church. Praying, singing and worshiping together is a prophetic act that proclaims unity above division, rejoices in diversity and celebrates our common calling to proclaim the good news of God's love in Jesus Christ. 
~ Pastor Eric

"These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.'" ~Matthew 13:40-41

Jesus commands the disciples and all of us to go out and proclaim the good news that Kingdom of God is near.How have you seen the Kingdom of God at work in your life? 
In the time of the Hebrew Bible, God’s people would build a monument wherever they felt God has done something amazing. They would gather stones and pile them high to remind them and tell everyone who passed there that God has done something incredible- to proclaim that God is Good! How will you proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God has come near? What evidence will you give? How has the kingdom come alive in your life?
~ Pastor Eric

"Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin" ~Matthew 13:40-41
Temptation is an invitation to turn away from God and to choose something other than love, other than forgiveness, other than patience or self-control. None of us is perfectly good nor perfectly evil but instead each of us is composed of traits that reflect the Kingdom: love, grace, forgiveness, patience, compassion, and aspects that turn us from God: jealously, pride, hunger for power, hatred and violence. Jesus tells us that a time will come when those things that pull us from God will be burned away and righteousness will be all that is left. Where is God calling you? What is tempting you or pulling you away from God?  
~ Pastor Eric

"Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." ~Matthew 18:21-22
Forgiveness is one of the most difficult and yet most central aspects of the Christian faith. There are many stages of forgiveness: forbearance, truth-telling, empathy and justice. Like stages of grief these are not chapters that one simply passes through but instead is more often messy and difficult. Perhaps the most difficult is empathy – to be able to see the situation from the other’s perspective. Jesus is constantly calling us to see beyond ourselves: to see the wholeness in the broken, the faith in the radical, the power in the powerless.   

"Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full." ~Matthew 14:19-20
Often when we think of the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion we are reminded of the Last Supper on the Thursday night before Jesus was arrested, put on trial and crucified. However, the earliest Christians in the years after Jesus’s death and resurrection celebrated Jesus’s ministry by sharing a meal whenever they gathered. They remembered that Jesus ate with Pharisees and tax collectors, with rich men and prostitutes, with lepers and scribes and when he did be proclaimed that God’s grace, that God’s table knows no bounds. Breaking bread together is so central to who we are as people and as Christians that it is included in this Lord’s prayer. That every day we break bread we might be reminded of how blessed we are to have “our daily bread” and how blessed we are to share it with others.  ~ Pastor Eric